


Postcards from the Land of Milk and Honey

by HobbesAndCompany



Category: Hamilton - Fandom, I Made America (Web Series), Time travel - Fandom, founding fathers - Fandom
Genre: Gen, I don't own IMA, IMA lives on forever, Nonsense, collective apology to the founding fathers, this is 8 years late but i'm doing it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25785556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HobbesAndCompany/pseuds/HobbesAndCompany
Summary: Disclaimer: I do not own IMA. If I did, it would have 12 seasons by now.James Madison Has Been Found...Unfortunately, he's still being held against his will by the the Super- PAC "American Revolutionaries for Freedom and Families" ("ARFF")  whose determination to use the founding fathers as pawns to further their own bizarre political agenda is matched only by their desire to reach levels of evil that up until now, were reserved for comic book supervillains. It also doesn't help that John Dockery, (AKA the  "Fish Wife")  has been placed in charge of ARFF's "Property Reclamation" Unit and is eager to redeem himself after walking out on the PAC's  multi-billion dollar enterprise. Not only that, but he is dangerously close to figuring out the true nature of James Madison's "sickness", which if he does, could spell disaster for all parties involved.Thankfully help is coming for James in the form of 5 of his fellow founders, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin. Though the gentlemen lack the concrete plans (and driver's licenses) needed  to rescue their comrade in arms, they made America without concrete plans or driver's licenses, and things turned out pretty okay in the end. Right?
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Loss and Gain

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first fic, I'm so excited, thank you for being here! This chapter is kinda slow but I have to set things up. This is set about a month after the season finale, so just sit back, relax, and I promise it will start to pick up soon!

_"Could great men thunder_   
_As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,_   
_For every pelting, petty officer_   
_Would use his heaven for thunder;_   
_Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,_   
_Would all themselves laugh mortal."_

_-_ Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_

The early morning light began to throw strange and beautiful patterns on the slightly off white walls of the Chicago apartment. Outside, the noise of the city steadily rose as the citizens of the windy city awakened and dragged themselves half asleep out of their warm beds to begin the seemingly impossible task of getting ready and facing the day and whatever it might bring. It was late February, and the stark gray sky and biting cold wind encouraged the idea already formed in the tired minds of the people that it would be a much better decision overall to crawl right back under the covers and let whatever happens happen.

However, reality kicks in. There are kids to drop off at school, meetings to attend, phone calls to make, meals to eat and loved ones to be with. The citizens brace themselves as they get out of bed and try to remove all traces of sleep from their minds and bodies. Little pieces of a big mosaic. But you did not come here to read about ordinary people. You came to read about _them_. There is a quiet sort of dignity reserved for the common man, but there are some who eclipse that dignity and receive nobility, wether in life or posthumously. This is the story of a group of those lucky few, who by a twist of fate worthy of one of the ancient greek tragedians, I don’t know, Sophocles, maybe (unfortunately though there is no patricide in this book, or murder in general, either accidental or deliberate, thank you HS English II), find themselves penniless pilgrims in the very land they helped create and strangers to their own descendants.. But enough of my ranting and second (okay, third) rate philosophizing, this is their story, so now let’s draw back the curtain and return to the apartment on that cold Chicago morning and learn about the men who inhabit it.

It is fitting that the man we should meet first should be well, first. He’s a man we are all familiar with on some level, desentized to maybe. He’s become a natural part of our American landscape, a lot like the mountain that has his face carved into it and just like that mountain, we assume he’s always been there and always will be. But right now, he’s very much man, a slightly tired man, sitting at a modest kitchen table, drinking deeply from a mug of hot tea, enjoying the few moments of quiet the early hour affords him. Even sitting down, he cuts an impressive figure, though to his surprise, he’s less likely to be the tallest man in any given room these days, despite being 6 “2 with a build that wasn’t exactly lanky. A hand reaches back to sweep a stray tendril of reddish brown hair streaked with gray, only recently cut and shaped into the short, modern style. Steady blue gray eyes focused a little absentmindedly on the wall as a thousand individual thoughts and worries emerged from the mist of his mind and dissolved just as fast. In a few minutes, he’d have to get up, get ready and find his way to the office building where he now spent 8 hours of his day doing … doing…. Well, he wasn’t exactly 100% sure. An “office manager” didn’t have a specific line of duties, and these days, he could be asked to do anything from setting up a “mail merge” (it took a 30 minute step by step explanation by phone with Franklin reading instructions from something called “Wikki how”, the only step one could take after Caroline first discovered his complete lack of knowledge about “Outlook”. If she found him googling what she considered “basic” skills, it would be like Cornwallis discovering the battle plans for Trenton and Princeton neatly tied with a bow served on the same tray with his morning tea) or spending a good few hours having an animated phone discussion with a gentlemen about the warranty policy on office chairs (If they broke before 6 months, free replacement and shipping).

The overall silence of the room was broken by the entrance of the second member of our group. John Adams was a man of many traits and accomplishments, unfortunately, subtlety wasn’t one of them. He strode into the kitchen and immediately went for the cabinet next to the fridge that contained everything from teabags to Franklin’s beloved pop tarts. With a single swift motion, he pulled open the cabinet and scanned the contents. With another sudden motion he turned back to where the General was sitting:  
“Did you use the last tea bag?”  
The sharp, serious, delivery of the question, combined with the gentlemen’s still unbrushed hair and the voluminous sleeves of his untied wrapper (bought for a song off Amazon.com), reminded the General of a Puritan minister of Mr. Adam’s native New England questioning some poor soul who had been accused of preaching against the dogma of sola scriptura.  
The slightest smile could be seen in the General’s eyes as he entertained the image.  
“No, to your left”  
The Minister turned back to the congregation of his cabinet and after a thorough re-scan located the missing box of tea bags, removed one, grabbed a mug from the tea towel it had been set out to dry on, and turned on the electric kettle. Within a few minutes, he was seated across from the General at the kitchen table. After equally respectful and common greetings and polite questions about the quality of each other’s sleep and tea, a noise could be heard further back in the depths of the apartment.

“Jefferson or Hamilton?”

“Jefferson, his shift at the bookstore starts about half an hour after my shift at the coffee house.”

Jefferson’s new job was a fairly recent development. He was still bound and determined to follow his music, but Jefferson had learned that having a successful musical career in the 21st century was a bit like winning a lottery ( a fact that John never missed an opportunity to remind him of). Jefferson was content with never topping the “Billboard 100” thing that his bandmates never stopped talking about or playing to sold out stadiums (he had seen the pictures of Shea Stadium and merely looking at the picture filled him with dread). All he wanted out of his music career was for people to listen and appreciate it, with maybe a few casual (but respectable of course) performances sprinkled here and there. Though this was an achievable dream (his weekly performance audience at Moonshine was growling slowly but steadily and he had been asked to perform` at several other venues), he realized that if he wanted to continue to build his music career, he would have to get another job to support it. This fact had been emphasized when his bandmate, Ty, had been called home unexpectedly after his parents found out that he had dropped out of his online grad school and was using the rest of his “tuition money” to indulge his love of weed, women and song (in that respective order). The incident had scared their bandmate, Mark, so much, that the young man had disappeared into thin air, and the last Jefferson heard of him, had volunteered for the “Peace Core”, which according to Franklin’s research, meant he was probably overseas somewhere administering vaccines to small children and the like (if the pictures were true). Privately, Jefferson wasn’t that torn up when the three members' paths had diverged. The two men had served their purpose (teaching him the basics of modern music and the modern music industry), and to be frank, if either Martha or Polly courted a young man similar to either Ty or Mark, the young man would probably be thrown out of Monticello by the ear (with all the pomp and circumstance Virginia Hospitality required of course). No, when it came time for his daughters to marry, he would find them well bred, wealthy,educated, landed husbands who could provide them with a happy life, lots of children and, unlike Ty and Mark, knew that Wyoming was not one of the 13 original colonies.

Regardless, Jefferson had realized that it was impossible to pursue music exclusively unless you had some unseen entity (like the disgruntled and righteously furious Mr. and Mrs. Clemson) providing you with cash. The result of this discovery was a job. The “Book Bazaar” wasn’t a glamorous job by any means, it was after all, a retail book warehouse, but the rest of the staff was amicable enough, he didn’t have to work the register often, and he got an employee discount on any book he wanted (the result of which could be seen in the quickly growing stacks in his room).

However, it wasn’t the amatauer musician turned novice bookseller who entered the kitchen on that cold, gray, morning. It was Hamilton. Hamilton, who ever since the disappearance of Madison, spent his nights on Franklin’s computer (after the latter fell asleep of course) combing through public police records, chatting with various contacts in the true crime community online, and listening alternatively to either police scanner chatter or various podcasts and videos about missing person cases, either solved, ongoing or cold. It was not a happy life, and as a result, Hamilton had essentially become nocturnal. So, the surprise both older men felt when the second youngest member of their group marched in in the same sweatpants and long sleeved shirt the General was pretty sure he had seen him in the previous day, was already very, very real. His surprise quickly turned into confusion when Hamilton proceeded to thrust the laptop in front of his face with a victorious air.

“Hamilton, Good Lord man, what has gotten into you?” John Adams cried, his voice increasing in volume as the sentence ran on and the laptop was still within 5 inches of Washington’s face.

Hamilton, turned and with the air and gravity of a man who has just discovered the cure for every disease known to man, and in a surprisingly calm and even voice spoke; “I found Madison”


	2. Measure for Measure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! OMGNESS, thank you for the views and the kind souls who left kudos! Thank you so much, and if you have any suggestions or stuff you would like to see in the story, just drop it in the comments! 
> 
> This is the final introduction chapter, I promise. I set the stage for the founders, now I gotta do the same for ARFF. So sit back, relax, and enjoy! Thanks again!

_ARFF Office Block/ Washington DC/ 2/28/2012_

The familiar vibration of the text alert on his i-phone snapped John Dockery’s attention off his computer screen. Almost automatically, he grabbed the phone from where it had been laying face down on his desk, read the message on the screen, and swore. Almost jumping out of the seat, he grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair and half ran half walked down the hallway to his supervisor’s office. In his haste, he forgot to minimize his computer screen, which now displayed an array of various archived documents, e-mails chains with research centers and libraries, plus, an open online forum discussing the pros and cons of the upcoming “Oda Nobuna no Yabou” anime.

But John had much bigger worries on his mind than somebody seeing his internet history. Quickly, before he could think about what he was doing, he knocked loudly on the closed door and waited an agonizing two seconds before the exasperated voice called out for him to “Come In” before returning to what John could vaguely make as a phone conversation.The door was opened and John inwardly braced himself to get ready to meet his fate.

The man sitting behind the desk quickly was up and pacing so intensely it looked like he was trying to make a permanent imprint of his circular route on the linoleum floor. The spiral cord of the desk phone he was talking on tethering him to the desk like a horse to a lunge line. As soon as he saw that John was fully in the room, he quickly whispered something into the receiver and set the phone back down on the cradle.

Never taking his eyes off John, the Supervisor took his dear sweet time to lowering himself into his office chair and making himself comfortable. Finally, he broke the silence;

“Do you know who I just got off the phone with?”

“N..no Mr. McHale”

“Do you want to take a guess?”

“No Mr. Mchale”

“I’ll give you a hint, it was Mrs. Abaneki, do you want to guess what she wanted to talk to me about?”

John simmered inside, McHale was toying with him, drawing the ordeal out in order to make him as uncomfortable as possible. John knew the man never liked him, but now, he wasn't even trying to hide the full range of his disgust. Under other circumstances, he’d tell him to cut the you know what, but he was in absolutely no position to talk back or question one of his superiors after the events of the previous month.

“No Mr. McHale”

“She had just gotten an email from one of our biggest donors, stating that they were getting antsy, they either want access to the products, or they’re going to be wanting a complete and total refund. Do you know why that poses a problem for us?”

“We… we don’t have the money Sir”

“And where might ARFF potentially get that money Mr. Dockery?”

It took every ounce of self control in John’s body not to scream.. This entire conversation was meant to humiliate him, like a 4th grader who got caught behaving badly and was being forced to admit his fault in a roundabout way by a principal who considered him or herself “clever”.

“From our Donors Mr. McHale”

“Exactly Mr. Dockery. So you can imagine the situation your little _hissy fit_ last month put us in. Our donors invested in ARFF on the one condition that when our experiment was successful, they would have exclusive access to the products of said experiment. They were willing to pay big money because we promised them big results, and we have contracts that say as much. So, how do they think they feel knowing that the products they payed millions for ARE CURRENTLY GALLIVANTING AROUND CHICAGO WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD?”Do you think they’re going to keep giving us money if we don’t keep our promises and fulfill the contracts? When we hired you, you BEGGED the board for this task, you were our resident historian, you promised us you could handle it. You said you knew these men, I believe your exact words were “inside and out”. You devoted your life to studying them, and yet you abandoned ship because they started calling you names. And on top of that, you reassured us over and over again that as soon as the money ran out, they would come crawling back.. No options you said, they would have to… no question about it...

John couldn’t take it anymore. He had hit his limit and he needed to defend himself, waiting for the smallest pause so that he could jump in and justify himself and his actions. The second the opportunity came, he dived in;

“How the heck was I supposed to know that John Adams would be able to get a job at a Good Lord forsaken COFFEE SHOP? Or that a company would hire Washington of all people as an office manager? A job that, spoiler alert, requires a COLLEGE DEGREE? IT TOOK ME 5 YEARS TO GET A JOB WITH A DEGREE! And you are completely ignoring the fact that one of those _product_ s you care so gosh darn much about is sitting pretty in the warehouse 3 blocks away...

“YOU KNEW THESE MEN YOU SHOULD’VE KNOWN WHAT THEY WERE CAPABLE OF. I CAN’T TELL A HISTORY BOOK FROM A RAT’S BUTT BUT I EVEN I KNOW THAT THESE AREN’T THE KIND OF MEN WHO GO DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT!”

“But Madison…”

“Is the only reason you are still standing here. Why you still have a job. And of course, the one you manage to bring back is currently taking the scenic route to the nut-house and can’t write his own name much less endorse a senatorial candidate”

“Sir I still…”

“Don’t try to get yourself out of this Dockery. You couldn’t even get Madison back without exploiting some of AFFF’s more… _delicate_ … contacts in order to apprehend a man who’s shorter than most middle schoolers and practically stumbled into your ever loving arms, if I remember your phone call correctly.

“You mean Victor? There’s 5 of them, what was I supposed to do if they fought back?”

The supervisor didn’t even try to disguise his snort of laughter,

“ What makes you think you would even see them? When you found him, he had been wondering all night and most of the morning, you picked him up when he was out of the city a third of the way too Milwaukee You just _had_ to drive by that stupid campaign launch didn’t you? Couldn’t help yourself. You were supposed to bring him straight back to D.C but you had to drive by and send a message didn’t you?”

“Was I supposed to just let them think they had got off scott free? That we were just going to throw up our hands and go “oh well, better luck next time, enjoy the 21st century on us!”

“ Oh please. They knew full well we wouldn’t give up that easily. And duck tape? Really? Really? What would’ve happened if you got pulled over? If someone saw? This might be a difficult concept for you to understand, but running a campaign ad featuring a man who has ligature marks on his good Lord forsaken wrists is going to raise a few eyebrows and might result in our lawyers having to engage in yet another midnight shredding session.”

Since John figured that since his “not talking back to superiors” rule had already gone down in flames, he might as well keep it up, since he was probably going to lose his job anyway. Funny, he genuinely hated this job and his coworkers, but he hated the idea of having to walk away from the 6 men who he had idolized most of his adult life more. It was a wasted opportunity. “Fishwife”, yeah right. They weren’t going to just get to fade back into the sunset. That would be too easy, too good, for them.

Nobody can hate something like somebody who once upon a time loved that same thing.

“If you enjoy finding fault with my practices so much, then why don’t you FIND YOURSELF ANOTHER HISTORIAN WHOSE WILLING TO DRAG HIMSELF HALFWAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND PUT UP WITH THEM!”

“WELL GUESS WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO PUT UP WITH IT ONE MORE TIME YOU POOR TORTURED SOUL”

John expected a lot of things, but that eventuality had never in his foggiest dreams, occurred to him.

“What?”

Mr. McHale let out one his signature sighs and continued in a much calmer manner, but it was still obvious that he did not want to deliver this specific news, and was much happier chewing John out;

“Mrs. Abenaki didn’t just call to let me know about the e-mail. The e-mail was just one part of it. Long story short, the board decided it’s less expensive to reclaim their property than to repay the donors. Since you have the most experience, they want you to lead the reclamation team. Now understand that I argued against this….”

But the rest of whatever Mr. McHale was trying to get across was lost on John. He was far far away, dreaming about the very moment when he would fulfill his task (and he would fulfill it, regardless of what they would try to pull). Only when they were safely in the arms of ARFF, only when they would look at him with fear and respect instead of the bizarre combination of mirth, hatred, and pity that they viewed him with before. Then and only then, could he be happy.

He smiled (on the inside of course, John Dockery made it a point to never smile outwardly unless the event/ person/ item etc… in question met his high standards and deserved laughter. He told himself it was because he had an extremely sophisticated sense of humor, the sad truth of the matter was, that he had no sense of humor.) John Dockery had once loved the founding fathers, but now, that same energy he had put into loving them he now transferred into raging, burning hatred, they would pay for humiliating him, and for (as he saw it), taking countless amounts of his time, effort and energy. He would make sure every single moment was paid back. They would watch their lives wasting away, just like he believed his had. It was only fair.


	3. Crux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm back! Sorry I've dropped off the face of the earth for the past few months, I had the bright idea to start this fic right before school started and well, you can see the consequences. 
> 
> But I'm back! Thank you to all you kind souls who read, commented, and left kudos! 
> 
> Let's rock and roll my dudes

_“Wisdom comes through suffering. Trouble, with its memories of pain, Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep, So men against their will Learn to practice moderation. Favours come to us from gods.” ― Aeschylus, Agamemnon_

Both mugs of teas were set down on the table so fast you would’ve thought they were on fire. “You What!!” “How?” “Where is he?” “How did you find him” The questions from both men were rapid-fire and after a few seconds, reached the volume that caused everybody’s second favorite Virginian founding father to abandon any ideas he had of getting a few more minutes of sleep and getting up to find out what all the fuss was about. Franklin would have joined too, but a common yet still effective combination of eating half a box Smore’s Pop-Tarts in place of dinner and watching a good ⅓ of the Director’s Cut Lord of the Rings marathon on HBO had rendered him exhausted. He was now passed out on his twin bed in the room he shared with Washington, dead to the world. Even the Archangel Gabriel would have had to blow his horn two or three times in order to get him up and conscious enough to stand before the Lord on Judgement Day. Back in the room across the hall, Thomas Jefferson finally gave up on getting anymore sleep. It was strange, he never used to be this… tired before all this happened. He used to get up whenever there was enough light to read the clock by his bed. But now, he would’ve leased out Monticello to a family of mockingbirds and collected his lease in various species of bugs they found in order to get 5 more minutes of sleep.” However”, he thought as he made the bed, he grimly thought, if the sheer force of time could reduce a man as brilliant and insightful as Mr. James Madison of Montpelier to a whimpering, cowering, weak, child afraid of his own shadow, he shouldn’t be surprised that time travel also stole his ability to be an early riser. If he was back at Monticello, at home, he would’ve completed his wake up routine by plunging his feet into a bowl full of ice-cold water to climatize himself to the early morning chill. However, he knew it would take a lot more than some cold water soaks to ever get used to the bitter, unceasing cold that in the few weeks he’d been there, seemed a permanent resident of Chicago. He doubted he’d ever get used to it. However, that part of his morning routine had been indefinitely suspended, because the cold water soggied the bedroom carpet, and John Adams, who occupied the second twin bed in the room, in his own words, preferred to “not start his day feeling like he was the 9th passenger on Noah’s Ark”. Daily showers had so far proved a fitting, if not quite as invigorating, substitute. But, there would be no shower at the moment, the noise from the kitchen had reached a level that was no impossible to ignore. Pulling on his own wrapper, he made his way towards the commotion. What greeted him was a sight for the ages. Hamilton, in yesterday’s clothes, excitedly acting as the go-between for Adams and Washington. Standing and holding the computer with one hand and alternating between typing and widely gesturing with the other, he was explaining excitedly to both men who were constantly interjecting and asking questions, all three crowded around the screen like moths to a light. Within two seconds of his setting foot in the kitchen, Adams looked at him and shooed him over. Jefferson joined the throng, and almost immediately he was bombarded on both sides by the conversation as each of the men tried to explain what was going on or, continue their preferred line of questioning simultaneously. Regardless, the collective effect was that Jefferson was more confused than ever. Washington, seeing the bewilderment on Jefferson’s face (and, in all honesty, he was quite perplexed himself) politely but loudly suggested that someone wake up Franklin and that the entire party should move back over to the kitchen table and receive a full debriefing on the situation. A minute later, Franklin shuffled into the room, the deep sleep he had just exited still evident by the puffiness of his eyes and the blank expression on his face which hinted to his friends that his body might have been present, but it was obvious that his mind was not fully, well, there. One can’t really blame him, being rudely awakened from the deepest of sleep filled with wonderful dreams of beautiful elven women in full regalia canoeing down a river in a boat made of pop tarts by an irate John Adams physically shaking you and yelling something about “Madison” “Ham” “Laptop” and “KITCHEN NOW” is enough to set even the most balanced and sharpest of minds off-kilter. Regardless, the entire troupe had been gathered and seated. Hamilton was at the head of the table, and as the only founding father not currently in sleepwear, he had assumed an odd sort of dignity that not even the fact the clothes were a day old could negate. Hamilton gently set the laptop on the table, took a breath, and leaped into his story. “You are aware gentlemen, that these past few weeks have seen me…. deeply disturbed and troubled over the disappearance of our mutual friend and colleague James Madison…” That statement was met with an intense series of glances and expressions between the rest of the founders that said and expressed more than any novel ever could. “Yesterday afternoon, I was doing my hourly check on ARRF’s Facebook page when I happened upon this photograph” A second and a click later, the picture was enlarged on the computer screen and a symphony of chair squeaks and scuffles occurred as men scooted closer to the table to get a better look at the key to the puzzle that had been hanging over their heads for weeks. The photograph was maddeningly, disappointedly normal. Just a smiling group of ARFF employees outside a nondescript building in a parking lot filled with cars. It could’ve been sold as a stock photo. Adams was the first to speak, “What does a “ Confronting Minnesotan Exceptionalism In The Workplace Seminar” have to do with Madison? “I know that it does not look like much at first glance, but I beg you to please be patient with me. See, the parking lot, in the back of the photo? See the black…. He quickly checked a different tab, this one displaying a document full of notes, and switched back... Toyota Corolla in the lower-left corner? To expedite the process, Hamilton moved his pointer finger to the desired car, and after a few seconds, all members of the party recognized the car. “At first I thought nothing of it as well, but then I noticed that this car looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why. As you have probably now inferred gentlemen, there are perhaps thousands of this same model of car in Chicago alone. But when I clicked on the picture and enlarged it, I realized that there was one thing, one detail, one small insignificant thing gentlemen, that would’ve gone unnoticed had I not clicked on the picture and made it… full screen… I think that’s the correct term. That’s when I noticed this…” he then pointed to the back of the car at a small, white, circular sticker to the left of the license plate with a set of blurry letters that could barely be made out to form the initials “AARP”. “Now”, Hamilton said, “you remember the night at the campaign launch when we saw Dockery and Madison? Well, as you know, we chased after the car for a good minute or two, and though I didn’t realize it for a few minutes, I remembered seeing something vaguely white on the bumper of the car we were chasing. It was a long shot, but I decided to follow it anyway. As you know, I had contacted Darby right after the incident to get the security tapes at the suggestion of one of my online friends. As you know, the angle did not capture the license plate like we hoped it would do. But after noticing the sticker, I pulled the footage back up and re-examined it.” Another pause ensued while a new video player tab was pulled up and the right section of the film located. Hamilton with a well-practiced hand dragged the icon the little indicator to the correct time and let the few, precious seconds of footage flash across the screen. Though it was a bit grainy, and only showed for about two full seconds, it was unmistakably the same sticker on the same car, complete with the same half-visible dealership logo. Hamilton, presentation finished, looked expectantly out to his fellow founding fathers, waiting for their opinions, waiting to hear if the theory he had woven together from bits and bobs and pixels had any real bearing on reality. If all these tenuous, vaperous connections between words and the real world would form a bridge that would lead to the finding of an actual flesh and blood man, a flesh and blood man at the mercy of a man who wielded power as petty and tyrannically as King George and his parliament.


End file.
